Gasper Wedding

October 05, 2009

Gasper Wedding

Saturday AM I manage to bang down to the 11am ferry in record time to get out to Steve and Jennifer's wedding. I've known Steve since god knows when – used to steal SNES games off him when I was 12 -- and had run into Jen (AKA “Larry”) occasionally out on the island in the last few years since they started dating. Just a great couple, really couldn't be more of a fan of them -- both separately but especially together.

Still exhausted from Friday I get out to the island and borrow the parents' Cherokee, then make my way down to the Cushman house at the end of Minister's Lot where the wedding was set to happen on the beach. Place was a great setup. Except for the horizontal, sheeting rain.

The crowd trundles from the house down to the dunes, rain smattering everyone off the ocean as the waves roll in under a dark sky. The groomsmen and one of the more stunning lineups of bridesmaids I've ever seen come down, the girls goosebumped and shuddering uncontrollably in the wet cold. Steve walks through the group looking pimp in an all-white suit and finally Jen shows up looking rather amazing and not at all like any kind of Larry.

The wedding goes rather quickly. Some intense fumbling is done untying the ring. Vows are exchanged. Two people are eternally unioned. There might have been some making out, I don't know. And everyone heads back up the dunes. The wedding party takes off in Vin MacAloon's van to do photos on the bluffs, leaving the rest of us to start drinking. The wedding party gets back twenty or thirty hours later, dinner's rolled out with some pot roast, baked stuffed flounder, and chicken marsala, there's some speeches from Greg and Steve McGirl and crytalking from the bridesmaids, and the night goes on.

I'm actually supposed to head home around 6:30pm to my parents’ dinner party so I can make the 8:15am boat the next morning to be able to get back to Boston for a Sox game with a vendor. But given the crowd there – many of whom I hadn’t see in four years or more – a 1pm boat and no game started to sound better and better. This situation wasn’t helped by one of the bridesmaids -- a girl out there I’ve thought was amazing for years -- suggesting I should stay so she could buy me a drink at the bar later. Which later turned out to mean I could have her share of the Beirut cups.

So there's a funny/great first dance with the Dire Straits' Romeo & Juliet. Funny only because I remember Gasper, Zephyr, Marcus and myself all standing around a bonfire listening to it at 3am sometime in 2000, and Steve commenting at the time about how much he f#%&ing loved the lyrics. Kind of cool to think back to someone standing there alone nine years ago, listening to a song that makes him think of a woman he hasn't found yet, then come back to the present and he's marrying her.

At one point Jen performs the bouquet toss. Second bridesmaid Nadine knocks everyone over like an Austrian steamroller trying to get to it and makes the catch. Steve then is on his knees and gets his wife's garter off with his teeth, then also tosses it back. I have no idea why I'm doing it but manage to snag the thing out of the air. Turns out I’m doing it because it means I get to put the thing back on Nadine’s leg with my teeth as someone holds my arms back. Which I find hysterical. I mean, the girl has incredible legs but I can barely keep the thing in my mouth from holding back the laughing.

After awhile we move foosball and ping-pong tables upstairs, and some pretty serious Beirut and foos action begins. Greg and I totally let the newlyweds win. Around 8 or so I drive my parents’ car back to their place as they’re stressing about it, have some coffee with their friends who seem to be having about as good a time as the wedding folks, then grab the CJ and head back.

Back at the party some folks want to hit up the Yellow Kittens, Steve wants to stay and enjoy what they have, I finally head into town with some dude Ryan who was obscurely connected to the event and who'd been bitching about people wasting the beer foam earlier. Eventually most of the wedding shows up at Kittens, and after last call Ryan, Nadine and I drive over to Nermoe's for late night. At... some point I pass out. Which is mostly a not-lie.

End up getting the 3pm boat back Sunday. Amazing time everyone, and my apologies again for threatening to murder the groom. I only meant it in the most loving way possible.

Posted at 02:03 PM in Block Island, Events, Food and Drink | Permalink

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